The Essentials of Political Analysis (second edition) Philip H. Pollock III From the preface As an instructor of courses in research methods and data analysis… I have found that political science students often confuse research methods with statistics… Indeed, many students see political science as a refugee from majors in which quantitative skills play a more prominent role, and they view a course in methods, which is often required, as a rite of passage, not as a fundamental foundation for the substantive courses in the curriculum. … I found that the abundant use of examples greatly enhances students' abilities to comprehend and internalize important concepts. I also observed that students become much more adept at describing political variables and interpreting relationships between them if they learn elemental graphing techniques. Accordingly, The Essentials of Political Analysis contains numerous hypothetical and actual examples, and the chapters instruct in the interpretation of graphic displays of variables and relationships. In addition to drawing on phenomena from U.S. politics, this second edition also includes new examples from comparative politics and international relations. The narrative encourages students to stop and think about the examples, and the exercises at the end of each chapter permit students to apply their newly acquired skills. Adopters of the first edition will find more exercises in this volume, including six new exercises with a comparative/IR focus. Philip H. Pollock III received a PhD from the University of Minnesota and is professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida. He has taught courses in research methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels for over twenty-five years.